CNDE is housed at the Applied Sciences Complex Buildings II and III with an area of ~52,000 square feet. Over 25 full time staff support the research efforts of
CNDE with additional support provided from faculty and scientific staff in the College of Engineering and the Ames National Laboratory. Typically 50 to 100 students are involved in research and education activities at CNDE including approximately 30 students enrolled in the NDE Minor program.
CNDE includes experimental resources in excess of $5M with brief details provided below for each of the major methods:
Ultrasonics:
- Six immersion scanning systems including turntables, billet rotator, dual axis bridge
- Air-coupled UT
- Phased array UT including three lab based systems, a medical UT system, and portable instrument
- Portable instrumentation for contact inspection
Eddy current and microwave inspection:
- Motion-controlled scanning for careful laboratory studies using impedance analyzers (up to 110 MHz) and commercial eddy current instruments (15 MHz)
- Swept frequency apparatus for surface material characterization, consisting of proprietary instrumentation up to 60 MHz and model-based inverse procedure
- Low frequency nonlinear EC method of case depth characterization in steel
- Anritsu 37347C vector network analyzer for microwave testing up to 20 GHz
Radiography:
- Five x-ray inspection facilities including three microfocus tubes and two standard x-ray tubes, with voltages up to 320 kV
- Film and digital radiography
- Computed tomography with <5 micron resolution
- Energy-sensitive characterization including high-energy x-ray diffraction
Thermal Inspection:
- Infrared camera, high resolution, high sensitivity, 640 x 512 array
- Flash lamps for traditional thermography
- Broadband, vibration source and laser vibrometers, and associated data acquisition and analysis for vibrothermography
Terahertz radiation:
- Time-domain pulsed system from 50 GHz up to 4 THz at 3 GHz resolution
- Frequency-domain continuous-wave system ranges from 50 GHz to 1.8 THz at 100MHz resolution
- 4D gantry system for static spectroscopy and high-speed imaging in various geometric configurations
Magnetic Particle, Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection, and Supporting Instrumentation:
- Three magnetic particle systems with coil diameters from 12” to 24”
- Penetrant inspection and quantitative assessment for characterization of indications
- Surface and material characterization tools including optical microscopy, laser profilometry, and x-ray fluorescence
- Two mechanical testing systems for mechanical property measurement and sample fabrication
25th anniverary poster hightlighting our facilities